JACK  LONDON'S 


"WHAT  LIFE 

MEANS  TO  ME" 


MEMORIAL  EDITION 


SAN  FRANCISCO 
December  3, 1916 


"Last  of  all,  my  faith  is  in  the  working 
class." — Jack  London. 


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GEORGE    STERLING'S    TRIBUTE 
TO   JACK  LONDON 

George  Sterling,  foremost  of  California's 
poets,  stood  by  the  bier  of  Jack  London 
in  Oakland  while  Dr.  Edward  Payne  read 
the  following  poem  as  Sterling's  tribute  to 
his  life-long  friend: 


Oh!  was  there  ever  face,  of  all  the  dead, 
In  which,  too  late,  the  living  could  not 

read 

A  mute  appeal  for  all  the  love  unsaid — 
A  mute  reproach  for  careless  word  and 
deed? 

And  now,  dear  friend  of  friends,  we  look 

on  thine, 
To    whom    we   could   not   give   a    last 

farewell — 

On  whom,  without  a  whisper  or  a  sign, 
The  deep,  unfathomable  Darkness  fell. 

Oh!  gone  beyond  us,  who  shall  say  how 
far?— 

Gone  swiftly  to  the  dim  eternity, 
Leaving  us  silence  or  the  words  that  are 

To  sorrow  as  the  foam  is  to  the  sea. 


Unfearing  heart,  whose  patience  was  so 

long! 
Unresting    mind,    so    hungry    for    the 

truth ! 
Now  hast  thou  rest,   O  gentle  one  and 

strong, 
Dead  like  a  lordly  lion  in  its  youth! 

Farewell !  although  thou  know  not,  there 

alone ! 
Farewell!   although   thou   hear   not   in 

our  cry 
The  love  we  would  have  given  had  we 

known. 
Ah !  and  a  soul  like  thine — how  shall  it 

die? 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 
By  Jack  London 

(As    Reprinted    by    C.    H.    Kerr    &    Co.,    from    The 
Cosmopolitan    Magazine,   by   permission.) 

I  was  born  in  the  working  class.  I 
early  discovered  enthusiasm,  ambition, 
and  ideals;  and  to  satisfy  these  became 
the  problem  of  my  childlife.  My  en 
vironment  was  crude  and  rough  and  raw. 
I  had  no  outlook,  but  an  uplook  rather. 
My  place  in  society  was  at  the  bottom. 
Here  life  offered  nothing  but  sordidness 
and  wretchedness,  both  of  the  flesh  and 
the  spirit;  for  here  flesh  and  spirit  were 
alike  starved  and  tormented. 

Above  me  towered  the  colossal  edifice 
of  society,  and  to  my  mind  the  only  way 
out  was  up.  Into  this  edifice  I  early 
resolved  to  climb.  Up  above,  men  wore 
black  clothes  and  boiled  shirts,  and 
women  dressed  in  beautiful  gowns.  Also, 
there  were  good  things  to  eat,  and  there 
was  plenty  to  eat.  This  much  for  the 


6  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

flesh.  Then  there  were  things  of  the 
spirit.  Up  above  me,  I  knew,  were  un 
selfishness  of  the  spirit,  clean  and  noble 
thinking,  keen  intellectual  living.  I  knew 
all  this  because  I  read  "Seaside  Library" 
novels,  in  which,  with  the  exception  of 
the  villains  and  adventuresses,  all  men 
and  women  thought  beautiful  thoughts, 
spoke  a  beautiful  tongue,  and  performed 
glorious  deeds.  In  short,  as  I  accepted 
the  rising  of  the  sun,  I  accepted  that  up 
above  me  was  all  that  was  fine  and  noble 
and  gracious,  all  that  gave  decency  and 
dignity  to  life,  all  that  made  life  worth 
living  and  that  remunerated  one  for  his 
travail  and  misery. 

But  it  is  not  particularly  easy  for  one 
to  climb  up  out  of  the  working  class — 
especially  if  he  is  handicapped  by  the 
possession  of  ideals  and  illusions.  I  lived 
on  a  ranch  in  California,  and  I  was  hard 
put  to  find  the  ladder  whereby  to  climb. 
I  early  inquired  the  rate  of  interest  on 
invested  money,  and  worried  my  child's 
brain  into  an  understanding  of  the  virtues 
and  excellencies  of  that  remarkable  in 
vention  of  man,  compound  interest. 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  7 

Further,  I  ascertained  the  current  rates 
of  wages  for  workers  of  all  ages,  and  the 
cost  of  living.  From  all  this  data  I  con 
cluded  that  if  I  began  immediately  and 
worked  and  saved  until  I  was  fifty  years 
of  age,  I  could  then  stop  working  and 
enter  into  participation  in  a  fair  portion 
of  the  delights  and  goodnesses  that  would 
then  be  open  to  me  higher  up  in  society. 
Of  course,  I  resolutely  determined  not  to 
marry,  while  I  quite  forgot  to  consider 
at  all  that  great  rock  of  disaster  in  the 
working-class  world — sickness. 

But  the  life  that  was  in  me  demanded 
more  than  a  meager  existence  of  scraping 
and  scrimping.  Also,  at  ten  years  of  age, 
I  became  a  newsboy  on  the  streets  of  a 
city,  and  found  myself  with  a  changed 
uplook.  All  about  me  were  still  the  same 
sordidness  and  wretchedness,  and  up 
above  me  was  still  the  same  paradise 
waiting  to  be  gained ;  but  the  ladder 
whereby  to  climb  was  a  different  one. 
It  was  now  the  ladder  of  business.  Why 
save  my  earnings  and  invest  in  govern 
ment  bonds,  when  by  buying  two  news 
papers  for  five  cents,  with  a  turn  of  the 


8  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

wrist  I  could  sell  them  for  ten  cents  and 
double  my  capital?  The  business  ladder 
was  the  ladder  for  me,  and  I  had  a  vision 
of  myself  becoming  a  baldheaded  and 
successful  merchant  prince. 

Alas  for  visions !  When  I  was  sixteen 
I  had  already  earned  the  title  of  "prince." 
But  this  title  was  given  me  by  a  gang  of 
cutthroats  and  thieves,  by  whom  I  was 
called  "The  Prince  of  the  Oyster  Pirates." 
And  at  that  time  I  had  climbed  the  first 
rung  of  the  business  ladder.  I  was  a 
capitalist.  I  owned  a  boat  and  a  complete 
oyster-pirating  outfit.  I  had  begun  to 
exploit  my  fellow-creatures.  I  had  a 
crew  of  one  man.  As  captain  and  owner 
I  took  two-thirds  of  the  spoils,  and  gave 
the  crew  one-third,  though  the  crew 
worked  just  as  hard  as  I  did  and  risked 
just  as  much  his  life  and  liberty. 

This  one  rung  was  the  heights  I  climbed 
up  the  business  ladder.  One  night  I  went 
on  a  raid  amongst  the  Chinese  fishermen. 
Ropes  and  nets  were  worth  dollars  and 
cents.  It  was  robbery,  I  grant,  but  it 
was  precisely  the  spirit  of  capitalism. 
The  capitalist  takes  away  the  posses- 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  9 

sions  of  his  fellow-creatures  by  mean's 
of  a  rebate,  or  of  a  betrayal  of  trust,  or 
by  the  purchase  of  senators  and  supreme 
court  judges.  I  was  merely  crude.  That 
was  the  only  difference.  I  used  a  gun. 

But  my  crew  that  night  was  one  of 
those  inefficient  against  whom  the  capi 
talist  is  wont  to  fulminate,  because,  for 
sooth,  such  inefficients  increase  expenses 
and  reduce  dividends.  My  crew  did 
both.  What  of  his  carelessness  he  set  fire 
to  the  big  mainsail  £nd  totally  destroyed 
it.  There  weren't  any  dividends  that 
night,  and  the  Chinese  fishermen  were 
richer  by  the  nets  and  ropes  we  did  not 
get.  I  was  bankrupt,  unable  just  then 
to  pay  sixty-five  dollars  for  a  new  main 
sail.  I  left  my  boat  at  anchor  and  went 
off  on  a  bay-pirate  boat  on  a  raid  up  the 
Sacramento  River.  While  away  on  this 
trip  another  gang  of  bay  pirates  raided 
my  boat.  They  stole  everything,  even 
the  anchors;  and,  later  on,  when  I  re 
covered  the  drifting  hulk,  I  sold  it  for 
twenty  dollars.  I  had  slipped  back  the 
one  rung  I  had  climbed,  and  never  again 
did  I  attempt  the  business  ladder. 


10  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

From  then  on  I  was  mercilessly  ex 
ploited  by  other  capitalists.  I  had  the 
muscle,  and  they  made  money  out  of  it 
while  I  made  but  a  very  indifferent  living 
out  of  it.  I  was  a  sailor  before  the  mast, 
a  longshoreman,  a  roustabout;  I  worked 
in  canneries,  and  factories,  and  laundries ; 
I  mowed  lawns,  and  cleaned  carpets,  and 
washed  windows.  And  I  never  got  the 
full  product  of  my  toil.  I  looked  at  the 
daughter  of  the  cannery  owner,  in  her 
carriage,  and  knew  that  it  was  my 
muscle,  in  part,  that  helped  drag  along 
that  carriage  on  its  rubber  tires.  I 
looked  at  the  son  of  the  factory  owner, 
going  to  college,  and  knew  that  it  was 
my  muscle  that  helped,  in  part,  to  pay 
for  the  wine  and  good-fellowship  he  en 
joyed. 

But  I  did  not  resent  this.  It  was  all  in 
the  game.  They  were  the  strong.  Very 
well,  I  was  strong.  I  would  carve  my 
way  to  a  place  amongst  them,  and  make 
money  out  of  the  muscles  of  other  men. 
I  was  not  afraid  of  work.  I  loved  hard 
work.  I  would  pitch  in  and  work  harder 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  11 

than  ever  and  eventually  become  a  pillar 
of  society. 

And  just  then,  as  luck  would  have  it,  I 
found  an  employer  that  was  of  the  same 
mind.  I  was  willing  to  work,  and  he 
was  more  than  willing***that  I  should 
work.  I  thought  I  was  learning  a  trade. 
In  reality,  I  had  displaced  two  men.  I 
thought  he  was  making  an  electrician  out 
of  me;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  mak 
ing  fifty  dollars  per  month  out  of  me. 
The  two  men  I  had  displaced  had  re 
ceived  forty  dollars  each  per  month;  I 
was  doing  the  work  of  both  for  thirty 
dollars  per  month. 

This  employer  worked  me  nearly  to 
death.  A  man  may  love  oysters,  but  too 
many  oysters  will  disincline  him  toward 
that  particular  diet.  And  so  with  me. 
Too  much  work  sickened  me.  I  did  not 
wish  ever  to  see  work  again.  I  fled  from 
work.  I  became  a  tramp,  begging  my 
way  from  door  to  door,  wandering  over 
the  United  States,  and  sweating  bloody 
sweats  in  slums  and  prisons. 

I  had  been  born  in  the  working  class, 
and  I  was  now,  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

beneath  the  point  at  which  I  had  started. 
I  was  down  in  the  cellar  of  society,  down 
in  the  subterranean  depths  of  misery 
about  which  it  is  neither  nice  nor  proper 
to  speak.  I  was  in  the  pit,  the  abyss,  the 
human  cesspoffl,  the  shambles  and  the 
charnel  house  of  our  civilization.  This  is 
the  part  of  the  edifice  of  society  that 
society  chooses  to  ignore.  Lack  of  space 
compels  me  here  to  ignore  it,  and  I  shall 
say  only  that  the  things  I  there  saw  gave 
me  a  terrible  scare. 

I  was  scared  into  thinking.  I  saw  the 
naked  simplicities  of  the  complicated 
civilization  in  which  I  lived.  Life  was  a 
matter  of  food  and  shelter.  In  order  to 
get  food  and  shelter  men  sold  things. 
The  merchant  sold  shoes,  the  politician 
sold  his  manhood,  and  the  representative 
of  the  people,  with  exceptions,  of  course, 
sold  his  trust;  while  nearly  all  sold  their 
honor.  Women,  too,  whether  on  the 
street  or  in  the  holy  bond  of  wedlock, 
were  prone  to  sell  their  flesh.  All  things 
were  commodities,  all  people  bought  and 
sold.  The  one  commodity  that  labor  had 
to  sell  was  muscle.  The  honor  of  labor 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  13 

had  no  price  in  the  market  place.  Labor 
had  muscle,  and  muscle  alone,  to  sell. 

But  there  was  a  difference,  a  vital 
difference.  Shoes  and  trust  and  honor 
had  a  way  of  renewing  themselves.  They 
were  imperishable  stocks.  Muscle,  on  the 
other  hand,  did  not  renew.  As  the  shoe 
merchant  sold  shoes,  he  continued  to  re 
plenish  his  stock.  But  there  was  no  way 
of  replenishing  the  laborer's  stock  of 
muscle.  The  more  he  sold  of  his  muscle, 
the  less  of  it  remained  to  him.  It  was  his 
one  commodity,  and  each  day  his  stock 
of  it  diminished.  In  the  end,  if  he  did 
not  die  before,  he  sold  out  and  put  up 
his  shutters.  He  was  a  muscle  bankrupt, 
and  nothing  remained  to  him  but  to  go 
down  in  the  cellar  of  society  and  perish 
miserably. 

I  learned  further,  that  brain  was  like 
wise  a  commodity.  It,  too,  was  different 
from  muscle.  A  brain  seller  was  only  at 
his  prime  when  he  was  fifty  or  sixty 
years  old,  and  his  wares  were  fetching 
higher  prices  than  ever.  But  a  laborer 
was  worked  out  or  broken  down  at  forty- 
five  or  fifty.  I  had  been  in  the  cellar  of 


14  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

society,  and  I  did  not  like  the  place  as  a 
habitation.  The  pipes  and  drains  were 
unsanitary,  and  the  air  was  bad  to 
breathe.  If  I  could  not  live  on  the  parlor 
floor  of  society,  I  could,  at  any  rate,  have 
a  try  at  the  attic.  It  was  true,  the  diet 
there  was  slim,  but  the  air  at  least  was 
pure.  So  I  resolved  to  sell  no  more 
muscle,  and  to  become  a  vender  of  brains. 

Then  began  a  frantic  pursuit  of  knowl 
edge.  I  returned  to  California  and  opened 
the  books.  While  thus  equipping  myself 
to  become  a  brain  merchant,  it  was  in 
evitable  that  I  should  delve  into  soci 
ology.  There  I  found,  in  a  certain  class 
of  books,  scientifically  formulated,  the 
simple  sociological  concepts  I  had  al 
ready  worked  out  for  myself.  Other  and 
greater  minds,  before  I  was  born,  had 
worked  out  all  that  I  had  thought,  and  a 
vast  deal  more.  I  discovered  that  I  was 
a  Socialist. 

The  Socialists  were  revolutionists,  in 
asmuch  as  they  struggled  to  overthrow 
the  society  of  the  present,  and  out  of  the 
material  to  build  the  society  of  the 
future.  I,  too,  was  a  Socialist  and  a 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  15 

revolutionist.  I-  joined  the  groups  of 
working-class  and  intellectual  revolution 
ists,  and  for  the  first  time  came  into  in 
telligent  living.  Here  I  found  keen-flash 
ing  intellects  and  brilliant  wits ;  for  here 
I  met  strong  and  alert-brained,  withal 
horny-handed,  members  of  the  working 
class ;  unfrocked  preachers  too  wide  in 
their  Christianity  for  any  congregation 
of  Mammon  -  worshippers ;  professors 
broken  on  the  wheel  of  university  sub 
servience  to  the  ruling  class  and  flung 
out  because  they  were  quick  with  knowl 
edge  which  they  strove  to  apply  to  the 
affairs  of  mankind. 

Here  I  found,  also,  warm  faith  in  the 
human,  glowing  idealism,  sweetnesses  of 
unselfishness,  renunciation  and  martyr 
dom — all  the  splendid,  stinging  things  of 
the  spirit.  Here  life  was  clean,  noble,  and 
alive.  Here  life  rehabilitated  itself,  be 
came  wonderful  and  glorious;  and  I  was 
glad  to  be  alive.  I  was  in  touch  with 
great  souls  who  exalted  flesh  and  spirit 
over  dollars  and  cents;  and  to  whom  the 
thin  wail  of  the  starved  slum-child  meant 
more  than  all  the  pomp  and  circumstance 


It;  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

of  commercial  expansion  and  world- 
empire.  All  about  me  were  nobleness  of 
purpose  and  heroism  of  effort,  and  my 
days  and  nights  were  sunshine  and  star- 
shine,  all  fire  and  dew,  with  before  my 
eyes,  ever  burning  and  blazing,  the  Holy 
Grail,  Christ's  own  Grail,  the  warm 
human,  long  suffering  and  maltreated, 
but  to  be  rescued  and  saved  at  the  last. 

And  I,  poor  foolish  I,  deemed  all  this 
to  be  a  mere  foretaste  of  the  delights  of 
living  I  should  find  higher  above  me  in 
society.  I  had  lost  many  illusions  since 
the  day  I  read  "Seaside  Library"  novels 
on  the  California  ranch.  I  was  destined 
to  lose  many  of  the  illusions  I  still  re 
tained. 

As  a  brain  merchant  I  was  a  success. 
Society  opened  its  portals  to  me.  I 
entered  right  in  on  the  parlor  floor,  and 
my  disillusionment  proceeded  rapidly.  I 
sat  down  to  dinner  with  the  masters  of 
society,  and  with  the  wives  and  daugh- 
UTS  of  the  masters  of  society.  The 
women  were-  -owned  beautifully,  I  admit ; 
but  to  my  naive  surprise  I  discovered 
that  they  were  of  the  same  clay  a&  all 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  17 

the  rest  of  the  women  I  had  known  down 
below  in  the  cellar.  "The  colonel's  lady 
and  Judy  O'Grady  were  sisters  under 
their  skins" — and  gowns. 

It  was  not  this,  however,  so  much  as 
their  materialism,  that  shocked  me.  It  is 
true  these  beautifully  gowned,  beautiful 
women  prattled  sweet  little  ideals  and 
dear  little  moralities ;  but  in  spite  of  their 
prattle  the  dominant  key  of  the  life  they 
lived  was  materialistic.  And  they  were 
so  sentimentally  selfish !  They  assisted 
in  all  kinds  of  sweet  little  charities,  and 
informed  one  of  the  fact,  while  all  the 
time  the  food  they  ate  and  the  beautiful 
clothes  they  wore  were  bought  out  of 
dividends  stained  with  the  blood  of  child 
labor,  and  sweated  labor,  and  of  prostitu 
tion  itself.  When  I  mentioned  such  facts, 
expecting  in  my  innocence  that  these  sis 
ters  of  Judy  O'Grady  would  at  once  strip 
off  their  blood-dyed  silks  and  jewels, 
they  became  excited  and  angry,  and  read 
me  preachments  about  the  lack  of  thrift, 
the  drink,  and  the  innate  depravity  that 
caused  all  the  misery  in  society's  cellar. 
When  I  mentioned  that  I  couldn't  quite 


18  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

see  that  it  was  the  lack  of  thrift,  the  in 
temperance,  and  the  depravity  of  a  half- 
starved  child  of  six  that  made  it  work 
twelve  hours  every  night  in  a  Southern 
cotton  mill,  these  sisters  of  Judy  O'Grady 
attacked  my  private  life  and  called  me 
an  "agitator" — as  though  that,  forsooth, 
settled  the  argument. 

Nor  did  I  fare  better  with  the  masters 
themselves.  I  had  expected  to  find  men 
who  were  clean,  noble  and  alive,  whose 
ideals  were  clean,  noble  and  alive.  I 
went  about  amongst  the  men  who  sat 
in  the  high  places,  the  preachers,  the 
politicians,  the  business  men,  the  pro 
fessors,  and  the  editors.  I  ate  meat  with 
them,  drank  wine  with  them,  automobiled 
with  them,  and  studied  them.  It  is  true, 
I  found  many  that  were  clean  and  noble ; 
but  with  rare  exceptions,  they  were  not 
alive.  I  do  verily  believe  I  could  count 
the  exceptions  on  the  fingers  of  my  two 
hands.  Where  they  were  not  alive  with 
rottenness,  quick  with  unclean  life,  they 
were  merely  the  unburied  dead — clean 
and  noble,  like  well-preserved  mummies, 
but  not  alive.  In  this  connection  I  may 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  19 

especially  mention  the  professors  I  met, 
the  men  who  live  up  to  that  decadent 
university  ideal,  "the  passionless  pursuit 
of  passionless  intelligence. " 

I  met  men  who  invoked  the  name  of 
the  Prince  of  Peace  in  their  diatribes 
against  war,  and  who  put  rifles  in  the 
hands  of  Pinkertons  with  which  to  shoot 
down  strikers  in  their  own  factories.  I 
met  men  incoherent  with  indignation  at 
the  brutality  of  prize-fighting,  and  who, 
at  the  same  time,  were  parties  to  the 
adulteration  of  food  that  killed  each  year 
more  babies  than  even  red-handed  Herod 
had  killed. 

I  talked  in  hotels  and  clubs  and  homes 
and  Pullmans  and  steamer  chairs  with 
captains  of  industry,  and  marveled  at 
how  little  traveled  they  were  in  the  realm 
of  intellect.  On  the  other  hand,  I  dis 
covered  that  their  intellect,  in  the  busi 
ness  sense,  was  abnormally  developed. 
Also,  I  discovered  that  their  morality, 
where  business  was  concerned,  was  nil. 

This  delicate,  aristocratic  -  featured 
gentleman  was  a  dummy  director  and  a 
tool  of  corporations  that  secretly  robbed 


20  WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

widows  and  orphans.  This  gentleman, 
who  collected  fine  editions  and  was  an 
especial  patron  of  literature,  paid  black 
mail  to  a  heavy-jowled,  black  browed 
boss  of  a  municipal  machine.  This  editor, 
who  published  patent-medicine  advertise 
ments  and  did  not  dare  print  the  truth 
in  his  paper  about  said  patent  medicines 
for  fear  of  losing  the  advertising,  called 
me  a  scoundrelly  demagogue  because  I 
told  him  that  his  political  economy  was 
antiquated  and  that  his  biology  was  con 
temporaneous  with  Pliny.  This  senator 
was  the  tool  and  the  slave,  the  little 
puppet  of  a  gross,  uneducated  machine 
boss;  so  was  this  governor  and  this 
supreme  court  judge;  and  all  three  rode 
on  railroad  passes.  This  man,  talking 
soberly  and  earnestly  about  the  beauties 
of  idealism  and  the  goodness  of  God,  had 
just  betrayed  his  comrades  in  a  business 
deal.  This  man,  a  pillar  of  the  church 
and  heavy  contributor  to  foreign  mis 
sions,  worked  his  shop  girls  ten  hours  a 
day  on  a  starvation  wage  and  thereby 
directly  encouraged  prostitution.  This 
man,  who  endowed  chairs  in  universities, 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  21 

perjured  himself  in  courts  of  law  over  a 
matter  of  dollars  and  cents.  And  this 
railroad  magnate  broke  his  word  as  a 
gentleman  and  a  Christian  when  he 
granted  a  secret  rebate  to  one  of  two 
captains  of  industry  locked  together  in  a 
struggle  to  the  death. 

It  was  the  same  everywhere,  crime  and 
betrayal,  betrayal  and  crime — men  who 
were  alive,  but  who  were  neither  clean 
nor  noble,  men  who  were  clean  and 
noble,  but  who  were  not  alive.  Then 
there  was  a  great,  hopeless  mass,  neither 
noble  nor  alive,  but  merely  clean.  It  did 
not  sin  positively  nor  deliberately;  but  it 
did  sin  passively  and  ignorantly  by  ac 
quiescing  in  the  current  immorality  and 
profiting  thereby.  Had  it  been  noble  and 
alive  it  would  not  have  been  ignorant, 
and  it  would  have  refused  to  share  in  the 
profits  of  betrayal  and  crime. 

I  discovered  that  I  did  not  like  to  live 
on  the  parlor  floor  of  society.  Intellect 
ually  I  was  bored.  Morally  and  spirit 
ually  I  was  sickened.  I  remembered  my 
intellectuals  and  idealists,  my  unfrocked 
preachers,  broken  professors,  and  clean- 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME 

minded,  class-conscious  workingmen.  I 
remembered  my  days  and  nights  of  sun 
shine  and  starshine,  wtere  life  was  all  a 
wild  sweet  wonder,  a  spiritual  paradise 
of  unselfish  adventure  and  ethical  ro 
mance.  And  I  saw  before  me,  ever  blaz 
ing  and  burning,  the  Holy  Grail. 

So  I  went  back  to  the  working  class, 
in  which  I  had  been  born  and  where  I 
belonged.  I  care  no  longer  to  climb. 
This  imposing  edifice  of  society  above 
my  head  holds  no  delights  for  me.  It  is 
the  foundation  of  the  edifice  that  inter 
ests  me.  There  I  am  content  to  labor, 
crowbar  in  hand,  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  intellectuals,  idealists,  and  class- 
conscious  workingmen,  getting  a  solid 
pry  now  and  again  and  setting  the  whole 
edifice  rocking.  Some  day,  when  we  get 
more  hands  and  crowbars  to  work, 
we'll  topple  it  over,  along  with  all  its 
rotten  life  and  unburied  dead,  its  mon 
strous  selfishness  and  sodden  materialism. 
Then  we'll  cleanse  the  cellar  and  build  a 
new  habitation  for  mankind,  in  which 
there  will  be  no  parlor  floor,  in  which  all 
the  rooms  will  be  bright  and  airy,  and 


WHAT    LIFE    MEANS    TO    ME  23 

where  the  air  that  is  breathed  will  be 
clean,  noble  and  alive. 

Such  is  my  outlook.  I  look  forward  to 
a  time  when  man  shall  progress  upon 
something  worthier  and  higher  than  his 
stomach,  when  thertT~will  be  a  finer  in 
centive  to  impel  men  to  action  than  the 
incentive  of  today,  which  is  the  incentive 
of  the  stomach.  I  retain  my  belief  in  the 
nobility  and  excellence  of  the  human.  I 
believe  that  spiritual  sweetness  and  un 
selfishness  will  -conquer  the  gross  glut 
tony  of  today. 

And,  last  qfall,  MY  FAITH  IS  IN 
THE  WORKING  CLASS.  As  some 
Frenchman  has  said,  "The  stairway  of 
time  is  ever  echoing  with  the  wooden 
shoe  going  up,  the  polished  boot  descend 
ing." 


(Copies  of  this  memorial  edition  of 
"What  Life  Means  to  Me"  may  be  had 
at  headquarters  of  Socialist  Party,  1530 
Ellis  Street,  or  at  McDevitt's  Book 
Stores,  1346  Fillmore  near  Ellis,  and 
2079  Sutter  Street,  near  Fillmore.) 


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